Portfolio Survey
Here's the tekboy portfolio as of tonight:
QCOM 28.5%
GMST 15.8%
SEBL 14.5%
JDSU 12.3%
NTAP 11.3%
CREE 9.0%
ITWO 8.4%
Note 1: All positions except ITWO include options (GMST and CREE) or LEAPS (the others) in addition to common. Together all the options and LEAPS amount to about 20% of the portfolio total.
Note 2: Still carrying a rather heavy margin load, lower in absolute terms than in the past but higher in percentage terms.
As for the biggest mistake of the year, as Apollo noted that's a tough call for me, since I have made so many. For example, I was nodding along saying "been there, done that" to many of the answers given so far, especially those of Uncle Frank, JPitcairn, darbyc, compounder, 99DAN, and akoni-1. But if I had to pick one real doozy, I'd say it was loading up on too much margin when the market was too richly valued. This meant that when the downturn came I had to do precisely the opposite of what I wanted to be doing (that is, I had to sell rather than buy as all my stocks became cheaper). Other mistakes perhaps cost me more in dollar terms, but none were as stupid, as obvious, and as avoidable. In the future, given my own particular situation and risk tolerance, I've decided to try to take on some margin when the market is way down and get off it when the market is way up; next time around I hope to be in better synch with the cycle.
One last thought, for some perspective. I started investing seriously in the late summer of 1999, with X dollars. I was lucky enough to stumble into this thread soon afterward, and by mid-fall I was mostly G&K. After lots of begging, ET taught me some basic conservative rules for options trading, which I promptly violated once I started dabbling there around the turn of the year. The combination of an all-tech G&K portfolio, options, and generous use of margin in a bull market pushed my account to 6.5X by late March. The same combination in a bear market cut the account to 1.7X today. For obvious reasons, I prefer to view myself as up 70% over 16 months, which is not all that bad for a technomoron investing newbie. I still retain some of the "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" of the spring, however, and haven't despaired thanks largely to the excellent folk around here who have taught me so much while providing such excellent fellowship in times good and bad.
tekboy/Ares@thanksall,andpasstheKool-Aid.com |
